The Rise of C2 Financial ft. David Temko

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Mic'd Up Show. This is season four, where every mortgage has a story. It's the ultimate hub where the hidden stories behind the mortgage industry come to life. I'm Michael Kelleher. Alongside me, Michael Zhao pops in and out. And today, and in every episode, we dive deep into the entrepreneurial spirit, the strategic insights and the breakthrough innovations that build the world's greatest mortgage companies. So whether you're advancing your career, which is why many of you come here scouting for industry leaders. We found one today. Or exploring opportunities in fintech or prop tech, you're in the right place. So get ready to unlock the story behind the mortgage. Today we're going to dive in with David temko, president of C2 Financial, who actually has a warm spot in my heart. I got into this industry on a national level by creating the mobile app. And I'm sure David's not aware of it, but a little bit more fragmented back then. And I, I don't. The last name even escapes me, but a gentleman named Vic was one of my first four clients and we built a C2 app for that branch. So that logo has always been with me and it's been with me for over almost two decades. So thank you, David, for coming on. Just if you want to tell briefly about yourself and maybe after that warm story, how long has C2 been here? I know your father, I believe, started it. I don't know if it's third generation, but maybe just a quick background on a brand that many of us know is number one according to arrive in the broker space. But what's the real story behind the brand? [00:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here, Mike, and thank you for having me. So I grew up in the business. My dad was an entrepreneur at heart and bounced around several different jobs. I think when he met my mom, he was selling T shirts out of a van in Santa Cruz and they moved, they met. My mom was an entrepreneur as well. She had some hair salons and they moved to San Diego to start a family and have a bigger market to, you know, get into business. But when he got into the business, he was actually early. He was in commercial real estate and he was at a old school firm called Burnham John Burnham and Company, which is kind of the OG commercial brokerage house of San Diego and spend some time there and retail leasing. And that evolved into him leaving and getting into the mortgage space and, you know, really started his career in it as an originator back when some unique products were out. And he was really a marketing guy that you know, knew the right borrower at the right time within that market and started marketing, marketing to who he thought was great for a product, a particular product in that time, at that time. And that evolved into him, you know, starting and pioneering the mortgage brokerage space. And those were the days when they were taking loan applications on carbon copy paper, you know, filling it out. You had the white, the pink and the yellow and one would go here, there would go the processor and the lender. And he was an Excel guy and basically took, extrapolated that information, put it into Excel and had his processor, had his lender and then kind of hit the street and started, you know, giving his pitch to loan originators. Hey, this is my software, this is my process, these are my lenders. Join me for, for 10% or take this and do it on your own. And you know, that was really the genesis of a high split mortgage broker shop. That was yes capital funding that evolved into growing with a partner, Fred Tronick called Windsor Capital. That evolved into. Well actually was Cobalt Financial, which is now C2 Financial. So that's our story. [00:03:45] Speaker C: It's good to see you David. I just joined. Thanks for coming on to our show. I met your dad back in nine. Well your dad and Brian and Fred back in 98. And back then they were doing the, back then the FHA 125 loans. I was a specialty and getting into that foray of, of being a mortgage banker and saying I think we're going to switch over, we're going to switch over to. And that's when I, and then I joined another net branch of yes Capital at that period of time. And so it, so we had a branch within a branch because Ron created the autonomy that you could have a branch within a branch so you could actually own a company and then have another company underneath it. It was, it was a very, very, very autonomous business where you had contract processors working for other contract processors. And it just, there's a whole lot of randomness that, that I think that that was learn, it was learned during that time period. And you consider this is a, a contract processing back into the 90s. It's evolved a lot since then. Right back then everybody was using just point. And then it wasn't until like five years later when I opened up my own branch just after the, and Windsor Capital we had the opportunity to transfer from Calyx Point into Encompass. So the amount of processing during that time period was enormous and especially given that how heavy compliance actually evolved from back then to its present period. With C2 Financial right now, if we can go back to what you've learned, because you didn't, you didn't, you actually didn't start off in residential lending. You actually started off in commercial and very similar to your dad. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I mean, I grew up like, with the mortgage and the commercial, like, you know, just real estate language around the dinner table. So it was naturally natural for me to kind of evolve into that space. I remember I graduated college in 2007, which was an interesting time in the market to come out of college and try to find a job. And I surrounded myself by my dad and his best buddies. I called my board of directors. They were real estate guys, doctors, attorneys, you know, finance guys. And I remember being there on a Tuesday and my dad going, wow, the market's really falling out. What, you know, what are we going to do here? And I remember seeing my dad's best friend who's a big commercial real estate investor. He had a different demeanor. And I. And that's kind of where I just, at that point I recognized that there wasn't a place for me within our family business and I needed to go out and do my own thing. Just kind of entrepreneurial, spirited in mind as well. Just. And I went and joined a big commercial brokerage house and cut my teeth there, you know, just, you know, smiling and dialing, you know, what, whatever it took to, to make the call, to get the meeting, whether it was, you know, understanding the market, understanding the need, having, you know, reason for the call, open any question and, and close for the meeting, get the meeting, get the listing, make the sale, you know, and that was, you know, the just foundational components that I took in my, you know, from a sales perspective that I evolved with and eventually got into, you know, commercial banking. That was really interesting to kind of get, you know, insight on how big banks operate from the, from the inside, you know, what it looks like when, when a loan officer, a loan broker brings an opportunity to, to a bank, to a wholesale lender and how they assess and what they have to go through to kind of move it through that system to ultimately get loan docs. And so I eventually evolved out of there and saw an opportunity for commercial loan brokerage at C2. And I just basically found someone like myself at every institution that was good at what they did and knew their credit box. And then when I had opportunities, I would, um, you know, I broker deals on the commercial basis, you know, whether they're my own clients or facilitating the needs of loan officers that had you know, client, commercial, client needs here. And it just grew from there. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Picking up on growing and learning. I, I heard you say your mother had some hair salons. I always joke with people around me. Eddie Scissors, my, my hairdresser is a guy who knows a guy and about everything and he knows what everybody's doing. And of the most fascinating things I heard in the conference circuit and then a guest on our show, Jeremy Davis, talks about how barber shops and bodegas, he calls them, but corner stores and, and religious places are the CRMs of the community. They actually know more than the most lenders own CRM. On what's going on, you say no. And Eddie, like, what did you learn from your mother about always talking and learning about what their customers were doing and, and where the opportunities were? And as it translated into how you. [00:08:37] Speaker B: Sell, I mean it's, it's a gift of gab. You know, if someone's stuck in a chair with you, you're going to have a conversation with them. You're going to actually get pretty, you know, get a lot of information out of someone. And I think it goes from, that's from my, my mom's side. But my dad, I always joked around was the most curious person on the planet. And if you have a genuine curiosity and it comes from an authentic place, you're going to learn about someone. You're know, know a lot more about them over the course of a meeting or the time they're sitting in your chair getting their haircut and then you start to develop a relationship. So I think those are, you know, key components in, in no matter how much technology comes in to our life, nothing will be able to substitute a good conversation. Learning about someone and building relationship. [00:09:21] Speaker C: You know, you just mentioned you grow, you've grown up in mortgage or real estate and you, and you talk about your dad. What are, what would be two or three gems that you gleaned from your dad in leadership? And how would, how would that apply in leading a large organization today? [00:09:42] Speaker B: It's really leading with service. My dad believed that you give it, if you give it away, if you give it all away, it will always come back. And he was a big believer in that. And if you lead by example, people will generally gravitate towards you as the right person to kind of be part of. And you know, he's never been afraid to. We work super hard. I learned a strong work ethic from both my parents. But all my, I have two younger sisters, one of which works with me, the other is an entrepreneur, has her own clothing store in Los Angeles. But, you know, nothing's ever given. It's always earned. And that's why, you know, I, I felt that it was always important for me to go out and cut my, my teeth doing my own thing. And ultimately that would come back and I'd earn my seat at the table. And that evolved to ultimately me, you know, being in a position that I, I'm blessed to have, you know, every day to lead a company that we have right now. But I would say that, you know, be your authentic self identify, you know, talent or be open minded to opportunity. There's a lot of people that have come to me and said, hey, I want your help here. And you go out on a limb, you give people, you know, the opportunity to prove themselves. And they generally will, you know, and they, you kind of challenge them with a promise and hold them accountable or they hold themselves accountable. I think of one time where, you know, a gentleman that's a very close friend of mine, David Kakish, is in Alabama. He's a loan officer of ours and he met me in, in Michigan. He said, hey, I know you're not in Alabama. I know I'm new to the company. Would you get licensed here? And I said, hey, are you going to kill it? He's like, I'm going to kill it. And within a year or so he was, you know, top, top five in the, in the company, in a brand new state, in a brand new market. And I think that those opportunities and seeing that is very, it's just extremely rewarding to kind of see that, that talent grow and see that success be found. [00:11:36] Speaker C: You know, one of the things that Ron talked about is his. His customer actually wasn't the borrower. His customer was actually the loan officer and the originator. I really appreciated that he had an appreciation for the people working with him, not for him. And that was something that was a great collaboration. So I have this question for you because you're your own person now as the leader. What's your definition of the perfect loan officer? The perfect customer. So that those who might be having some kind of inquiry in the future would say, you know what, this is the perfect originator that we'd like to be able to see at C2 Financial. [00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the loan officer that knows that they can do it alone, but they don't want to do it alone. And they want the support of a great community that empowers them, that allows them to have the autonomy to focus their time on what they're the best at. We take on a lot of the things that, that entrepreneurs in our space don't want to do that we do really well. You know, the legal, the licensing, the compliance, the lender relationship, all that infrastructure so they can focus their time and their energy having great conversations with their customer, the borrower, their spheres of influence, you know, realtors, attorneys, financial advisors, all those people that they're really good at, you know, fostering relationships with. While we know our space, like, like you said, like my dad said, our client is the loan officer. And what's unique to C2 that I still see from a cut, from an interfacing standpoint is our website still doesn't have a place where we can take borrower information that's not our customer. And even though we see a tremendous amount of traffic come through it, just because we've got, let's just say 1200 loan officers across the nation that are having conversations and they go, hey, I want to check out what this company C2 is. We still don't have the ability to take their information. We only have an ability for a loan officer to join our company because that is our customer, that is our client. That's who we, you know, want to provide a great service for. [00:13:36] Speaker A: Every day listening to you talk, and I never say this, but I see somebody that should be, could be like the next leader of the NBA for a year. And because I say that, we go down to the advocacy conference and that's the only time we are involved with commercial. And as we walk around the halls of the Capitol Hill lobbying the same representatives and congressmen and senators, we have similar bills we're pushing for. And a lot of times the commercial is the, the seed to plant to make more supply available for us to do residential. You also understand clearly loan officers and this industry is shifting where loan officers have more power than ever. And so I just think it would be an exceptional balance to get a voice like yours. And I know oftentimes the brokers are over in the AIM name world and so it may not happen. But my question would be, why is it always so disconnected? Why does every loan officer wish they were in commercial and I'm sure commercial wishes they were in residential. When rates start dropping, how are, how are you able to mix it all together, make that perfect cement? [00:14:51] Speaker B: I was fascinated by, you know, just the dollar sense of commercial real estate. And it's a lot, there's a lot less emotion in it in terms of the transaction. It's like, hey, if, if it makes money, it makes Sense you're dealing with investors that are seeing opportunities or you're dealing with business owners that are tired of getting jerked around by a landlord and it's time for them to buy. And I positioned that channel and when I was working in that space with the loan officers, as they are a full financial and real estate resource for their clients, they're helping their clients make the biggest financial decision of their life oftentimes and that's generally the first one outside of maybe buying a car. But when they buy a home, they can buy a home for a couple reasons. I would say there's three main ones. It's, they have a strong, they have a good job, so they have a good W2, they have a good operating business, so they have, you know, a 1099 that's, that's a good S or C Corp or what have you that they're probably renting space in or they may own space in, or they have good income producing assets that's going to show up on their schedule E and they can see if there's interest on there. So the latter two is an opportunity for the loan officer to go, hey, I notice you have a 1099, you're running a business. How's your business going? I could see you're doing, you're doing well. You know, is there ways for, for me to help you? You know, would you consider buying a building or if you own a building, what does that loan look like? And they go, really? I didn't know you could do that. So, and then it goes even further. Like if you see somebody that has, you know, commercial properties on their schedule E. Hey, I saw that your, this property is commercial and you have interest on it. What does that loan look like? And so you, you start digging deeper under the hood and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Like, you know, that conversation, that conversation when that, that person's getting their haircut and you know, know just being curious in an authentic way to find out how you can help and then you really can dive deeper on their full financial picture, how you can help them grow, you know, personally financially and just over overall successfully and, and get a bigger kind of picture on where their trajectory is and how you can help them get there. So I, I, I love bringing that all together, which is why, you know, we've been around for a long time. Michael's been part of our legacy. This company from when my dad and Fred started, it's been around for 30 years. Some of those loan officers, their clients, they're doing reverse mortgages for now. You know, they, they helped him buy a home, maybe it was a 30 year mortgage and it's paid off and now they want to reverse because that's a good retirement mortgage solution. That's a better, that's a good fit for them in that stage of life. So we've evolved the company to really facilitate the needs of our loan officer at any stage of their career that helps facilitate the needs of their borrowers at any stage of their life, which is pretty cool. [00:17:37] Speaker C: Do you think there's a disconnect right now between commercial lending and residential lending? Because at C2 you can offer both to your originator to originate either type of transaction. What's the information disconnect, do you think, between resi and commercial that you think one should know so they can make a transition to, to deeper understand the. What is the difference? I don't, I don't find that many informed originators. [00:18:05] Speaker B: The first thing that comes to my mind is a debt service coverage ratio. Your dscr. You're starting to see a lot more DSCR deals in the residential side. Commercial is the original dscr. The property makes enough money to support the debt and from a historical basis, usually on a three year trail, you know, you're looking at year to date financials in the past two previous to make sure you have enough, enough debt service coverage to service the current debt or the amount of debt that they're looking to get, whether it's from a purchase or refinance standpoint. So nowadays you have this, we do DSCR loans, but it's a function of what's a market rent. You know, it's, it's a pretty, you can get pretty creative with that term. But I, but the commercial space is truly the original dscr. And now that's evolved into the residential side from an investor standpoint. So that is unique. That's probably the first thing that jumps out to me. And I think that there's, there's opportunity to make investments in every, in every, any stage of any economy and in a lot of different markets. So we're seeing, you know, a lot of different investments in a lot more states, which is why the company's grown a lot. You know, we're in 40 states now and that happened on a much very organic nature. You know, loan officers have clients that you know, own homes in California and now they can work remote and they're moving to Nashville. All of a sudden we're licensed in Tennessee or I got a loan officer in Nevada but he's a Tulane alumni and all of a sudden we're, you know, now we're licensed in Louisiana. So you see these things happen. And I think it's from a network standpoint, it's from an affordability standpoint and it's an ability for our customer, our client, the loan officer, to continue deliver value to theirs. [00:19:44] Speaker A: That's a cool migration story. It makes a lot of sense too. You're in a good state to have people kind of go to other states as well. I don't know how much it applies to commercial loans, but certainly in residential loans. We have a lot of our interviews and we couldn't do without our sponsors that allow us to come weekly. So we're going to listen to a couple quick commercials from our sponsors that are helping many lenders across the country and then we'll talk with David on the other side. [00:20:13] Speaker D: Verifying income for all your applicants means you need roughly 23 different vendors and waste hours and hours of your team's time. But with true work, it's just a single place for all your income verification needs. So you get the most advanced voie solution. Truark combines all major verification methods into a single easy to use platform to give you a completion rate of 75%, cutting your cost by up to 50% and getting real results for your team. TrueWerk your one stop stop shop for income verification click Verify Repeat where the. 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Certified wire fraud protection to protect loss of funds at closing due to cyber based and other threats. We help improve your bottom line through fraud prevention, risk management and validating the parties and documents involved in mortgage closings. Prevent fraud and theft on your closings. [00:21:58] Speaker C: We always appreciate all of our sponsors who help support our show not only for our guests and also for the mortgage industry itself and as we support our industry. David, last year I was watching the YouTube video, EPM's leadership panel that they had out there. It was your competitors on there. It was Nick Cordas, Tom Ailes at the other companies. And one of the comments that was mentioned is that you network with each other. Can you expand on how actually other mortgage brokerages, especially large national ones, would network with each other? I know at the Mortgage Bankers association, we just had the national where Mike was at in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. And you have IMB leaders, but they're going to be talking about banking issues, they're going to be talking about recruiting issues and so on and so forth. But what do you talk about as an independent mortgage broker within your own industry and what the trade leaders over there? It sounds to me, especially after that interview trade panel, that you guys would be more contentious with each other. But if you guys do network, what do you guys talk about? What does it sound like? What happens in that room? [00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it started a while back. I think we all were at a event at UWM and we all kind of got together in a room. There was probably five or six of us from, you know, a leadership perspective from some of the, like the big five big brokerage houses. And it's kind of talking about what really impacts us in terms of, from a legal standpoint, from a compliance standpoint, what we're looking to do. I think there's one thing that we can consistently all agree on and it's getting loan officers out of a retail space where they can deliver better products and pricing to a consumer in the broker space. So I think that's one thing that we all kind of collaborate on, that we're all getting, you know, we're all pretty good at. Everybody has a, a slightly different culture and model. So it's, I mean, somebody that's going to go to, to Mike Cordes shop is going to be a different Persona than somebody that's going to go to my shop or Tom Ollis's. You know, we, we run different platforms, different feels and different flavors. And so from that perspective, it's, it's kind of we're as friendly as competitors can be. I, I'm not sure if you've ever seen, I mean you're, you're a studio guy, you've probably seen that movie Anchorman, and it's like a bunch of guys in the back alley and they all have different weapons, like one's got a trident, one's got a chain. What's like, everybody's like, it's like, God, I, I hate you, but God damn it, I respect you. You know, it's kind of like. But they're, they're all great guys and they're own regard and within their own company and with their own style, you know, and it really is a function of how loan officers, wherever they're at, gravitate towards one person that resonates with them, somebody that they connect with. And I'm going to connect with somebody differently than they are in a different way. And so from that perspective, it's, it's all good. Like, I'm going to Vegas with Tom and a top producer of ours in December. You know, we'll be shooting, you know, dice at a craps table side by side because, because we're friends and you know, stack it, don't rac. We'll have some fun and you know, it's all good. You know, we're here to all boats rise, you know, or all lift with a rising tide. And you know, we collaborate. There's, there's situations that might's been through that I've dealt with in the past and if there's an opportunity for me to help him circumvent issues that he's going through from my past experiences, I'm here to help with that, you know, and I get calls from some guys in New York, hey, how do you, how do you look at this? You know, we've been in it for 30 years. I have, you know, knowledge from, from that, from digging deep, from that way for people that are starting new. And I have the same conversation with a loan officer that's start trying to. A brand new loan officer or an existing loan officer that's trying to start their own shop, you know, and they want to do it on their own outside of a brokerage shop like, like C2. And if that, if that's what they're looking to do, I'm never. My saying is I'm not here to keep a birdcage from flying, you know, and sometimes people think the grass is always greener and I'm not here to keep them from seeing that grass because they're often going to go see it and it's not going to be greener and they're going to come back. So I'm a proponent of that entrepreneurial mindset and you know, I love working with guys that are of similar visions and values and, and do it in their own way. So it's, it's cool. It's all, it's all good. And, you know, we've taken loan officers from each other in the past and in the future, and it's, it's no hard feelings. I mean, obviously I have a personal connection to a lot of our people here. I pride myself in that space is having the, you know, the deepest connection with a lone officer than any leader can have. You know, I want them to feel that I'm extremely approachable. They have my cell phone. They can call me, they can text me. We can go on a fishing trip, we go on a hunting trip, we can go race cars together. Whatever it is, I'm down to do that and, and then. And get down to business because that makes hard decisions a lot easier when it's with people you like. [00:26:56] Speaker A: You've been growing this company really since, since you took over, but it has a brand you're proud of in. As you remember from the, the mobile app space, people often asked why we were doing so well, and I always said they want their own brand in the store. And I think that's still true in mortgage no matter what. In the broker space. I talk a lot about owning your zip code. Sometimes I'm talking to enterprise, but really the broker should be dominating their zip code. They often want to do it with their own brand name. Like when we were a broker. Right. The C2. What. I'll make it easier. What are your thoughts on people having their own brand names and bringing them to the, To a different company and back or, or keeping. Seems to me that's very in line with the technologies making it easier to run your own company these days within York, within your company, because there's a lot of compliance. But technology wise, just marketing, I mean. [00:27:54] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Great question. I check my ego at the door. You know, I think that C2 is a phenomenal brand and an amazing platform for any loan officer that's entering the space that wants to grow their business on our platform, like I said earlier, to focus on what they're good at. If that means they want to do it with their own brand name and have a dba, it's certainly something that we've done in the past and we'll continue to do for the right people that have earned those stripes in doing so. And, you know, and I've no qualms with, you know, if they want to grow that here, I, I'm, I'm all about it. We'll give them the infrastructure to do it. They can do it. With their own name and have it be powered by C2. So they've got their name, their brand, but powered by, you know, the force of C2 and the strength that we have of 1200 loan officers behind them. But that's their own, their own thing. And you know, I'm cool with it generally. Personally, I think that C2 is a really good brand and, and commands, you know, so you know, the recognition in the space and people know that this is where the most astute, the highest performers, the, the serious professionals in our space are home to. And they take that with that C2 name. If they want to do their own thing and have their own DBA and earn that on their own way, hey, more, more power to them. I'll help them out and they can do that with us or they can utilize our brand, our marketing, you know, the, A lot more from a corporate level, you know, I've got a full marketing team that, you know, how, knows how to develop collateral for any circumstance they're walking into, whether it's an open house, whether it's a meeting with financial advisors, all that stuff. We do that and help them in house. It's just a bit more of a challenge and an ask when it's their own branding because we don't have that within our repository, we'd have to do that. And you know, that's just, it's a taller ask. But if that's, but that's their choice, you know, it's not so much ours. [00:29:48] Speaker C: You know, as you talk about the originator being your customer, you also have the vendors that you have to work with. And, and if you're an imb, you're basically, you know, like Mike knows a ton of vendors that are out there right now, but actually you're also, you're also working with the independent mortgage bankers as the wholesalers. And for someone with C2's volume or one of your other competitors, especially with the amount of volume that you have right now, how is your, how, how is your relationship with the leaders? Are you talking to the IMB leaders or are you just talking to only the account executives? In order for you to either get the best pricing or the best service for the origination community? [00:30:29] Speaker B: I'm, I'm connected in all aspects. I know who the AES are. We have a rating system within our portal that's, you know, gbu, you know, we basically can say, you know, how they get five stars or one stars. So there's a lot of accountability from an AE standpoint. So I Know them on a first name basis, but I'm very, you know, in tune with the leaders and that's kind of who I deal with on a regular basis to make sure that we're getting the best products, pricing and service because you need to have all those three to be successful as an imb, you know, tpo, you know, wholesale lender within our space, even an investor on the, on the non dell side, which is an expanding space within ours. I'm, I'm pretty cool with all those guys. You know, I, I was just with Glenn Stearns on a hunting trip in South Dakota last week and, and Delfino Aguilar who runs tpo, you know, and Alessandra Ford came by and gave me, you know, the, the Alpha dog reward. You know, so I mean I'm top to bottom from a leadership perspective. An ownership to, you know, regional management to an ae. You know, I love working with those people. My, my passion for the business is, is being connected to, you know, our loan officers, people within our industry, folks that are really making an effort to, for progress to you know, work with great vendors and just kind of continue to evolve the broker space to make sure that it's, it's a common name. C2 is a common name from a household basis across the nation. And I think that that, that takes being connected to a lot of different. [00:32:05] Speaker A: People in the process help 140,000 plus families get into homes. That must mean a lot. UF store we say every mortgage has a story. That's a lot of stories like Encyclopedia Britannica, maybe longer with, with that the news right now servicing subservicing one in six homes here, you know, over there. Do you see communication with those families just a big, a big thing to swallow over as time progresses and loan officers come and go. Or do you see it as. [00:32:41] Speaker B: Something. [00:32:42] Speaker A: That'S just easy for you? Like that's the low hanging fruit. [00:32:49] Speaker B: You know, meet with a client and you develop a relationship. You have to, you make time and effort to grow that relationship and that's in, in mortgage, in, in really any aspect of, of sales or personal or family. And I remember my dad was a big acronym guy and I remember one of our C2 connects, he gave out a hat and it said sit s I t and stood for stay in touch. And if you stay in touch with your client, regardless of their needs in that moment and you're top of mind, then you're going to be able to help them or the people around them that are important to them because you did a good job for them in the past. So I think as technology evolves, as you see more of these other companies buy up, you know, servicing, you know, that's, it's a data focus because, you know, they're rolling back trigger leads. Well, if they're going to get with, get do away with trigger leads, they're just going to figure out how to identify opportunities through the data. And that's, we're seeing that from AI implementation, we're seeing that, you know, from scraping data and having synthetic calls, all that kind of stuff. And you know, the thing is, you know, the loan officer won't be replaced by AI. They'll be replaced by the loan officer that uses AI. And I think there's three ways you're going to be able to be really successful and that's going to be adopting systems quickly and using them to your advantage, having capital to deploy and being the best at what you do. So you got to be in tune with what is cutting edge and adopt it quickly, learn it and use it. You gotta be really good at what you do and you gotta have access to capital. And I think the last part one is from an entrepreneurial setting is oftentimes like access to kind of people investing, like whether it's VC or whatever, that doesn't apply as much in our space, but we have a tremendous amount of access to capital. On the broker side, we have 100 plus lenders that are in and out of the market every day. And that's the beauty of brokerage. You know, it's a free market. You have a lender that wants to fill a bucket, they've got a bunch of capital deploy, they're going to be super aggressive one day. All of a sudden our, you know, our loan officers are very in tune with how to find that person quickly with the right borrower to fill that void and get those loans, you know, funded, place processed and funded. And then that lenders back out and you know, their rates are priced out because hey, we have some capital, but we're going to deploy it at a higher rate than we did before because we're a little bit maxed out and then you have a backfill. So it's really a really beautiful system that we've created here from a brokerage perspective that that kind of embodies our ethos, our core value, free market. And, and having that as at the fingertips to our borrowers to, to our, to our clients, which is ultimately their borrowers. [00:35:37] Speaker C: One of the things I appreciate from back in the early 2000s that, that Windsor put together. And I think C2, and I know C2 is still doing it right now, is, is a message board, right? I mean it's like the Reddit of, of trying to find who is the best lender. And that goes out to the AEE and it says, oh, I have a loan scenario. And the AES will look at it and go, yeah, I have this loan scenario. Another thing that C2 has also done that I haven't seen in retail mortgage lending is actually getting to the originators together more than once a year as a gathering, breaking bread, meeting, meeting the vendors, in this case the wholesale representatives. And I like to know what, what type of further expansion do you think could be in the entire industry? I know you're already internally doing it, however, to better the industry itself in creating a better consumer face as originator to borrower. What do you think could be done either to replicate what you do or to, to figure out I can still do better. What is that thing? [00:36:43] Speaker B: Great question. So a couple things people often ask me what C2 stands for. It actually evolved from Cobalt Financial, but it's kind of been coined collaborative community. And we kind of embody that collaboration from an internal slack channel which allows loan officers to post scenarios. You have other loan officers that can chime in, say, hey, you go to this lender or the AE will chime in and you can basically find solutions to problems a lot faster. Which is what that community is all about, which is the power of it versus doing it on your own. You're, you're, you know, you're tapping into decades and decades, you know, years and years of professionals, knowledge within our organization that you have access to and nobody's really. There's, like I said, a lot of people check their ego out the door. Sure. Are we competitive? Is there an internal ratings in terms of where loan officers rate in terms of their production, their units and all that stuff? And does everybody want to be in the top five or number one? Absolutely. We, we compete every day, but we're here to do it in a collaborative way. So we have that internal system from an external perspective. I just, there's not a lot of money deployed in terms of advertising from a consumer perspective, from a brokerage standpoint, you know, you see, you know, let's just say big lenders, super bowl advertisements, we don't really see that as much on the broker channel. We are, you know, we're kind of what I call ourselves the Navy seals of finance. We are the ones that, that, that Strike and kill in the night. You know, we are the ones that when you, when you want, you know, something cleaned up, we, we come in and we take care of business. And if, you know, you know, and that's like a lot of our knowledge, a lot of is shared through word of mouth and a lot of access to us. You know, some of us are really good at promoting on a social media standpoint. Our biggest producers, they, you know, they build a village around social media and they make it fun and exciting and you want to be part of their. Their club and, and from a realtor perspective, working with them, from a borrower perspective, you want to work with them, you know, and I think that's how we kind of continue to grow the community. And, you know, like you said earlier, Mike, we've touched a lot of different people in homes. I've heard other lenders call it that, that American gift. And, you know, I think the power of homeownership is something that's kind of been starting to get stripped away as you see REITs, big, big capital places out of, you know, out of Wall street gobbling up homes and keeping the people that, you know, should own homes and develop that wealth that for savings have. So my goal is to combat that. My goal is to have great loan officers that have access to capital for the right people at the right time to buy a home that are comfortable with that. But it's always going to be a reach, but they're going to grow through it. And I think that if we can kind of take those stories and, you know, and make them. Just make them a lot louder. I mean, nowadays we have the ability at our fingertips, you know, on a phone to blast out stories from social media, you know, any different ways. You know, I mean, I think we publicized this on LinkedIn. There's pro. We have listeners on LinkedIn. You know, we've got a lot of followers on LinkedIn. I posted on, on your post, and that will, you know, have different ways of getting out to more people. So I think it's just constantly getting that word out and just positive energy, just driving forward is going to be a great way for us to kind of make sure that we're not the scapegoat, you know, like we were in the past from, you know, Wall street deploying products that we're the sellers of. We're, we're the foot soldiers to help, you know, get the products to the right hands. But it's not up. It's really not up to us to create them. I mean, that, that's kind of comes from someone else. And, you know, we're, we're the ones that identify the people that can use them in the right time, in the right place. [00:40:41] Speaker A: When I went to tag, I was inspired by leaders like you. I cried during the awards ceremony of Eddie's. It was very touching. And I had profound thoughts from Dr. Peterson. So it was really good. But one thing that stood out was his talk about the old guard versus the new guard. The average age of a home buyer is 36 years old. Sue Wergle just came out with this. The average loan officer is actually younger than I thought, 45 years old. And the average real estate agent, your big client, 57 years old, somebody that's more on the new guard, I would say, age wise, at least. When you look at the leaders in this industry, how can your loan officers and people approach you? What is your open door policy when they need advice on the changing of demographics and how they're going to relate and communicate with them? [00:41:29] Speaker B: So the beauty of C2 is we give nods to our heritage. You know, folks like, you know, loan officers like Michael, who have been with us for almost 30 years, you know, that have that, that professional acumen, that deep knowledge that somebody walking in the door tomorrow will have access to. I would hope that, you know, if somebody walked in that we just hired today and wanted to connect with somebody that has a deep knowledge for something that they don't have experience with, that, you know, there is that open door policy. That's that. And that stems from top down. You know, anybody can walk in my door, you know, and, and ask me a question. And I'm, you know, happy to have them sit down and explore why that question came out and how I can help answer it. And I think that it's an open door policy. I never like that. That's not my job saying. But I'm starting to realize it might be something I need to adopt because I'm doing a lot. And we, we actually operate on an, on an EOS platform and it's figuring out, you know, are the butts, are the right butts in the right seats. So it's making sure, like if, if that's the right question for me, I'm certainly here to answer it. If it's the right question for someone else, I'm here to direct it to the right place. But I think that, you know, we. There is a lot of the old guard, which I re, you know, when there was a lot less competition in the space, it Was easy for us to wake up and go, wow, we have these divisions that are ran by great people that we don't really even hear from. And nowadays we, we just have to drive that, move that needle more and that, I'm not saying it requires more management, but it just requires, you know, more data analytics to figure out why things are the way they are and how we can make them move in a better direction. And I think that goes from any aspects of, you know, business to scale. Like if a loan officer wants to figure out how to do, how to make a particular number, they're going to reverse engineer, you know, what it's going to take. What's an average loan commission? How many people do I need to talk to to get that loan? And you just back into it and you have that ability to figure that out with us here, with people we have and be new to it. But the earlier you get into a setting like C2, the longer Runway you have for success. And the earlier you adopt the entrepreneurial spirit here, the more success you'll find earlier versus what I call the golden handcuffs. You know, lives, our lives evolve. The younger you are, the less risk you have, the less overhead you have, which kind of, you know, are one in the same. And if you get into a space where you have a great mentor and you can learn from them how to fish the right way, you're gonna, there's going to be a lot more opportunity for you in your life. And I encourage anybody that has that kind of entrepreneurial mindset to, to jump in two feet as early as possible. And ideally in the financial sector with C2. [00:44:22] Speaker C: When I read in the news that Mr. Cooper had gotten acquired for their servicing by Redfin, I found it very interesting because one of the things I often think about is with mortgage loan servicing, we had, we had Stan Middleman freedom, and he's a big proponent of wanting to keep servicing inside. But if you're a mortgage broker and then you order a payoff and all of a sudden you're getting back solicited by the servicing company, it's a little bit frustrating and I think it's a lot of bit frustrating because now you're competing against mortgage loan servicers, right? And I think that it as a I becomes more prevailing in its marketing. It's a little bit more scary. What do you think for the mortgage brokers that are out there right now need to do in order to combat against number one, mortgage loan servicers who are soliciting their own clients for purchases and refis and how, and how can they be a better advisor originator so they don't have to worry about the servicing companies earning the business for their client just off of fee negotiate the. [00:45:31] Speaker B: Non solicit verbiage within the contract that you have in that lender. A lot of times a small organization will not be able to combat very tricky language in broker agreements that they have. Fortunately at C2, one of the benefits of being with C2 is you have the power of 1200 people and 5 billion in loan volume last year or so. And we have the ability to leverage that to put ourselves and our loan officers in the best position to not have their clients solicited from places that do servicing, that have in house retail shops that undercut what we do. So that's one reason and one way that we protect our loan officers here is, you know, making sure that this retail shop that's doing whatever they can to keep the servicing on their books, they will, you know, they'll take it as a loss lead just so they can keep that msa. And we, we, you know, we combat that. You know, ultimately we want the best rate terms, you know, product delivery to the customer. But it comes from a professional at C2 and it's not from somebody at a retail shop that's, that's making a hundred bucks a file for them to just keep, for their, for their, you know, public publicly traded company to keep that loan, you know, with the servicing. So that would be my, my one, one major and one powerful point to be with a large organization like us also with. [00:47:00] Speaker A: It might be a large organization, but you lean towards these warmth, feelings, branding. You have the masters, a tradition like no other. What are some life lessons that you think people can, you obviously push into golf humble you. It can teach you. And the people you go out and walk the 18 holes with can build relationships. There are many different ways you could go with this question, but how do you use golf as metaphor or a teaching tool to your team, especially when you're speaking in front of larger audiences. [00:47:35] Speaker B: Patience. It's a testament of patience. And you mentioned a question in part of your question earlier about the community piece. This kind of goes with that. We host a conference biannually. We come up with a great theme generally every time. The last one we did, we did an honorary golf tournament for my dad. It was called the Founders cup. And then that's, you know, and, and so a lot of us men in the industry played golf, certainly some women, my mom played, but then a lot of women in the industry had a spa day. So we find ways to recognize all aspects of people in our industry and at our company or people looking at our company. And you know, there was folks that have known my dad forever, had some fun stories to share, pretty colorful. And then the following day we had our C2Connect conference and it was in a master's theme and it was great. I, you know, talked about what it takes to compete on a very high level, like, you know, Rory McElroy or DeChambeau or, you know, these guys, you know, Tiger woods, all that stuff. And you know, you hear about how Rory played with Tiger and he saw how he played with these tailor made clubs and he's like, I got to get those clubs, you know, but he's going to play them to his own, you know, build out or dimensions or, you know, whatever it is. So you learn from, you know, really successful individuals, you know, and professionals at the company. And my goal for, or our goal for those conferences is for you to come, for you to collaborate, for you to connect, but you, for you to also go back to your desk the next day with a slightly different perspective, a slightly different thing that you're going to try out that you heard. And if that can make an impact in your day and how you go about your business, then that's really what makes the difference and why we do them. What I found is one of the greatest returns on that time are those conversations that loan officers have with their colleagues that they don't get to have when they're working from their home office or a small branch office with a couple loan officers that they're mentoring or those, you know. So I think that is really kind of the beauty behind it is connecting with your peers and talking about, you know, business actually, whether it's business or even personal, how people go through their lives, you know, and juggle that business, personal, professional, you know, we're all trying to fill those three buckets. And you know, I think that was one of the things my dad was extremely good at, that balance. How do fill your buckets of business, personal, family, and run a good business that gives you the time and the money to focus on all those things. And that was really, I'll never forget being out in Colorado looking at colleges with my dad saying, hey, you've reached my vision of success and me telling him exactly that. You have a beautiful wife, you have a family, you have a great business and you have friends and you have the time and the money and the work ethic to really enjoy it. [00:50:29] Speaker E: All. [00:50:29] Speaker B: And it's really cool. It's a really cool thing. And that's what we try to empower our people here, that it's a lifestyle. And that's why I continue to believe that this is a fantastic career path for anybody that's ready to make money and do it in a way that they can make an impact every day and change the fabric around them. You know, one home, one family, you know, one community at a time. [00:50:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I think you just being on this platform, it's great to hear that story. And I did get a kick out of your. I think it was your opening, but I found it even funnier, like 20 minutes later when it kicked in. You said there's a. There's like a former loan officer that's like a professional golfer, which I had no clue. And the reason I laughed after was what? Like, I wonder how much of a producer they were, if they were out on the course or if they were just born talented. But I found that very. What's that person's name? [00:51:29] Speaker B: Oh, what is his name? He wears the glasses. Of course. You would ask me that. I should know that. It'll come to me. It's not. It's not Higgins. Oh, shoot. Yeah. His dad was a realtor. His mom was a loan officer. He was working on loans because he didn't cut it on, like, Korn Ferry. And then one day he gets back at the golf course and finds the right financial backer to carry him, and. And then he gets back in the business and he was on the. [00:52:00] Speaker A: And Griffin, I just Googled. [00:52:02] Speaker B: That's right. Thank you. We need that guy, you know, I. [00:52:06] Speaker A: Know we need a Joe Rogan guy like that, but that's amazing. So he sort of just couldn't afford to. To get the coaching and all that on his own. So it's. [00:52:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. Yes, the coaching, but also, I mean, you're, you know, you're going out there, you're on the road, you know, you got your golf clubs in your. And. And. And you're driving around trying to make it. And that takes, you know, unless you have a lot of money saved to do that, you know, that risk that. That it takes to do that to. To win, you know, to get that million dollar check or whatever that is. I mean, it takes time. And so fortunately, somebody saw that for him. I joked around it at our conference that based on our scores the day before, I don't think anybody's going to be able to see that same opportunity. So let's focus on what we're good at, which is doing mortgages. [00:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. [00:52:54] Speaker C: Yeah. I think that one of the things that I appreciate about David is that, and I'm sure you've heard this before, but when I see you, I see your dad and not, and not just physically, but also in, in your mannerisms of how business is being done. I remember, you know, in talking, he was always about getting that business done. He was, he was really a hustler. And I think that when you're looking at hustling on behalf of the loan officers, you can see it, you can see them working for, for, for every, every single loan. Is there, is there going to be a time in the history of C2 where instead of, you know, and we, and I bridge this a little bit earlier when I was talking about mortgage loan servicing, but is there going to be a time where C2 helps the originator with their own CRMs in, in customer retention for C2 to actually earn that business as the broker on. Is the broker on behalf of the broker. So. [00:53:55] Speaker B: Great question. And this kind of goes back to what I was talking about, how we don't, we don't capture any borrower information on our website. We believe that the borrower is our client's client. We're sitting on all, I mean, from a compliance standby. We sit on hundreds of thousands of files. You know, with all that data. It's just not something that we've. Which has value. There's a lot of value there. There's a lot of data there. But I, I believe in protecting our client. And I would never want to bite that hands, that hand that feeds us. I want to make sure the loan officer feels comfortable, confident and protected at C2, that we honor them in the right way and we provide them with the right, with the right needs that they have. I do see, you know, us evolving into, from, not just from a compliance standpoint, but a lot of times, you know, analysis. There's analysis paralysis that steps in when you have so many options and you're coming from a place where everything's told to you or dictated that you don't really know where to start. So I, I think simplifying things and making it. Picking the right vendors or the right systems for the right people as they join us or evolve into that space is something that I see happening. Like I saw that you have Flowify as a sponsor. Some of our loan officers love Flowify. A lot of our, you know, from, you know, how they, how they, you know, work through the cadence of a loan. A lot of our loan officers use a partner by the name of Arrive from a. From an LOS standpoint or you know, and use Low Ninja for the CRM. So I think at some point we prob probably will cherry pick who our best vendors are that the greatest consensus of loan officers use, you know, from a constituency standpoint and maybe we evolve it in that way. But I don't really see the value of biting the hand that feeds us in terms of digging into the data and reaching out to the borrowers that that's not our client, you know, and I want to respect that and honor that. [00:55:53] Speaker A: I want to point out we have a great sponsor in Poly, which is a pricing engine, one of the three, and we just don't have the actual video in the middle. But we have great guests on there. I at least want them to hear that name. It'll be on your newsletter and such and right here at the end. Wanted to put that in there before. [00:56:14] Speaker B: Mike's final question and thought I'm familiar with Poly. Some of our top producing loan officers use them and they're a great component to their business. [00:56:23] Speaker C: Dude, I just want to compliment you and say thank you very much for coming on to our show. We get a lot of leaders in the industry industry right now we don't get very much opportunity to actually to reach out to the broker channel and for you and especially with the amount of volume that C2 puts out, we know that you're talking to not only to originators and also the IMB leaders. So for you to take the time out to be able to come onto our show is very much appreciated. So thank you so much for doing this. [00:56:48] Speaker B: I'm grateful for the opportunity to be in the place to do it with you guys and really appreciate you recognizing me and C2. It wouldn't be C2 without, you know, without you and without our community. And I'm just, you know, grateful to be in this place. So it's. It's an opportunity that I welcome every day. So thank you guys. [00:57:07] Speaker A: Thank you, David temko, President of C2 Financial, and thank you for joining us on this journey into the heart of mortgage innovation. Remember, every mortgage has a story and we're here to help you write yours. If you enjoyed today's insights, please subscribe, share with your network and connect with us on social media. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and uncovering the stories that drive our industry forward.